Aspen Journalism (https://aspenjournalism.org/category/rivers-and-water/page/2/)
City of Aspen water officials are now working to update the city’s comprehensive water management plan and the process could inform future decisions about potential new dams, reservoirs and hydro power plants. Continue Reading →
The $511,000 contract is seen by city officials as a way to help protect the city’s future diversion and storage projects from being called out by downstream water owners. Continue Reading →
Wild and Scenic status, which ultimately requires an act of Congress to obtain, prevents a federal agency from approving, or funding, a new dam or reservoir on a Wild and Scenic-designated river. Continue Reading →
Trees on a dam are considered a hazard as their roots can cause the dam to leak and high winds could blow the trees over, leaving a big hole where the roots were. Continue Reading →
The upper ends of both Castle and Maroon creek valleys would be the sites of two new city of Aspen water storage reservoirs and dams, under 47-year-old conditional water rights that the city has continued to keep alive. Continue Reading →
Aspen City Manager Steve Barwick remembers warning members of Aspen City Council in an executive session on Feb. 9, 2010, about what would happen if they repurposed a 42-inch pipeline between Thomas Reservoir and a proposed hydropower site on lower Castle Creek as an emergency drain line first and a penstock second. Continue Reading →
A state dam safety engineer is requiring the city of Aspen to cut down 25 trees on the Thomas Reservoir dam and said the trees may already have caused “dam safety problems.”
The listing of the Crystal River by American Rivers as one of the top-10 most endangered rivers in America this year is designed to influence the boards of two regional water districts: the Colorado River District and the West Divide Water Conservancy District. Continue Reading →
The approach used by the city of Aspen to gain federal approval for a proposed hydropower plant was cited as a bad example by a critic of the project in testimony last week before a House subcommittee on energy and power in Washington, D.C.
A new U.S. Geological Survey stream gauge on lower Castle Creek began recording public data on April 26 as a result of $34,000 in funding from the Aspen nonprofit group Saving Our Streams.